LOSTCIRCUITS

The FireGL product line spans over a variety of different models from US$379.- up to US$999.-, depending on what hardware is being used. The FireGL-X1 128 which is the subject of this review is based on the RADEON 9700 or rather the R300 VPU, using 128 MB DDR (I) over a 256-bit interface with the known crossbar configuration of four independent 64-bit memory controllers. It is still worth looking at the entire FireGL repertoire available from ATI. The FireGL X1 128 is hilighted in red.

FireGL Product Matrix

         

Left: Like the RADEON 9700, the FireGL-X1 uses Samsung 2A-rated (2.8ns cycle time) BGA memory components. Center: Dual DVI-I output. Right: the second DVI-I Port is enabled via a daughter board that is screwed to the FireGL-X1 PCB using an aluminum stand-off. Click for larger images.

Technical Specifications (FireGL-X1 128)

Graphics technology Powered by the FGL Visual Processing Unit (VPU) 256-bit high bandwidth memory architecture 4 parallel geometry engines 8 parallel pixel pipelines 128-bit full floating point precision 24-bits per RGBA component displays beyond 16.7M colors Display support Dual DVI-I supports any combination of digital and analog displays Maximum resolution of 2048x1536 per display Independent resolution and refresh rate selection for any two connected displays Dual integrated 10-bit per channel 400 MHz DACs Integrated 165 MHz TMDS transmitter (DVI & HDCP compliant) API and Operating system support OpenGL® OpenGL Shading Language Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 DirectX® 9.0 HLSL Windows® XP/Windows® 2000 Linux®

Graphic Features Hardware acceleration of the following: Anti-aliased points and lines or full scene anti-aliasing (2X, 4X, 6X) 3D lines and triangles Stipple points Two-sided lighting Up to 8 light sources Directional and local lighting OpenGL overlay planes Occlusion culling 6 user defined clip planes OpenGL polymode functions 32-bit (24+8-bit stencil) Z Buffer Fast Z and color clears Full DX9 vertex shader support with 4 vertex units Quad-buffer stereo support (FireGL X1-256p only) SMARTSHADER Technology Programmable pixel and vertex shaders 16 textures per pass Pixel shaders up to 160 instructions with 32-bit floating point precision for each RGBA component Multiple render target support Shadow volume rendering acceleration High precision 10-bit per channel frame buffer support SMOOTHVISION Technology 2X/4X/6X anti-aliasing modes High performance adaptive algorithm with programmable sample patterns 2X/4X/8X/16X anisotropic filtering modes Adaptive algorithm with bi-linear (performance) and tri-linear (quality) options HYPER Z Technology 3-level Hierarchical Z-Buffer with early Z test Lossless Z-Buffer compression (up to 24:1) Fast Z-Buffer Clear

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